Hello again one and all. We hope you’ve had a good week, and that the weather has been equally as nice for you as it has been for us.

Today, to wind down the week, we decided to go with this brilliant reading by Tom O’Bedlam of “And Death Shall Have No Dominion”, one of Thomas’s finest, darkest takes on mortality, religion, the forces of nature and the Human experience. Written around the middle of Thomas’s short life, the title pertaining to St Paul’s Epistle to The Romans (6:9), this is Thomas at his finest.

Bearing in mind that it is also a poem at it’s core about immortality, there is something fitting that this poem should still be making an impact and being analysed and recited nearly a century after it’s writing, and half a century after Thomas’s death. It can be said that true immortality comes from adding something to the world for future generations, and nothing fits that bill more than poetry, we feel.

Like this:

This damned discarded rag doll knowledge,
After a Bacchanalian bash where I was as an
Involuntary guest of honor in that gnashing festival.

GNASH GNASH GNASH

and goddamn if my jaw isn’t filled with concrete,
And me, the need to tear into either animal or man or
God.
Fitfully, I look down to see if I’ve kept my form in His
Image…yes, He’s still reflected, but when I close my eyes
My train of thought is more like a beast’s blood trail.

TESTAMENT:

It’s when I awake that It seizes me;
Puts me on Its hoary hand turns me into an
Apocalyptic puppet minus memory, and then…
There I am, on the floor again, angry because the
Immediate world around me doesn’t bear nail and teeth
Marks for my doubters’ benefit.
Cain’s genes are still a presence, and Seth still but
Scattered puzzle pieces. But I’ve been possessed enough
Times to know the puzzle whole.
Azazel, right you were, and I hear your cry outside.
However, I’m down too low, floor board-low, like a
Rag doll Adam.

Todays featured poem comes from Dennis Villelmi. A strikingly original piece of work, this poem is full of hidden metaphysical meaning, and a savagely dramatic use of imagery. An almost mystical fervor undulates throughout the poem, which matches the emotional crossroads contained within, and almost fanatical, possessed pace of the piece. A breathless, savage poem which invokes the spirit of Dante, and leaves scratch marks from bloodied, broken nails upon the walls of religious indoctrination. “A Low Gnosis” has just enough off an obtuse angle to it to hide the layers of meaning within to be unfolded like the pages of a burned, scorched bible.

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Like this:

What they call ultra-orthodox
I call obedient
What the State of
Israel
calls unemployment
I call full-time study
What Christians call the Old Testament
I call the Word of G…
parchment scrolls wrapped tenderly
in blue covers

How many lifetimes would it take me
to understand the Holy Book?
How many lifetimes to interpret
the deeper meanings?
to map the circuitous
logic
His logic
difficult for the mere human to fathom?

I’ve devoted my life
threadbare like my father before me
like my grandfather
my wife working in a kitchen to support us

My great-grandfather was a farmer
until the Russians
made it illegal for Jews to be farmers
and took his land
My great-grandfather was not a scholar
but we’ve all been scholars since

I wonder where his farm tools went
My grandfather often talked about
how much he loved his tools

Todays featured poem comes from Mitchell Krochmalnik Grabois, from the US. A writer who has appeared in close to 200 journals and magazines, we are very pleased to add his work to our archives.

This piece speaks of identity, and the myriad influences the world and history can have upon a person’s place in life. Musing upon the meanings of these parts of the Human experience, Mitchell takes all these parts of his own personal and family history and creates a poem that seeks to answer the questions of who we are, and what the World does to shape us into the way we are today. A piece which seeks answers from the past, and a piece that doubtless many can identify with.

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Todays featured poem comes from Rashmi Pluscec, the second piece we have featured by this accomplished Canadian writer. This piece is stiflingly dark, pointing a finger at the destructive folly of mankind. Rashmi drags us into the poem from the first stanza, and by the end of the poem the reader is left battered and brutalised by the savage, uncompromising use of language and destructive imagery. This is poetry at it’s most prophetic and apocalyptic.

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